Dec. 3 (Bloomberg) -- Commerzbank AG offices in Germany
were raided by prosecutors investigating whether life insurance
policies were used to evade tax.

The lender isn’t a suspect and is cooperating with the
authorities, Nils Happich, a spokesman for Commerzbank, said in
an e-mailed statement today. Prosecutors in Bochum, Germany are
investigating managers and staff of a non-German life insurance
company that they didn’t identify, according to a statement on
their website.

The suspects may have “helped German investors to evade
tax since 2006 in more than 200 cases,” according to the
prosecutors’ statement. “They may have sold life insurance that
were veiled asset-management agreements.”

Commerzbank dropped as much as 3.5 percent to 10.51 euros
in Frankfurt, the biggest decline in almost three weeks, valuing
the firm at 12 billion euros ($16.3 billion). The Bloomberg
Europe Banks & Financial Services Index fell 1.2 percent.

Prosecutors in Bochum have also led investigations
targeting Germans who hid money in bank accounts in
Liechtenstein and Switzerland to evade income tax. Last year,
they raided homes of UBS AG clients in Germany as part of the
probe.